Chair,
Pianist Max Levinson is known as an intelligent and sensitive artist with a fearless technique. Levinson's career was launched when he won First Prize at the Guardian Dublin International Piano Competition, the first American to achieve this distinction. He received overwhelming critical acclaim for his two solo recordings on N2K Encoded Music, and was awarded the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant. In 2005, he was given the Andrew Wolf Award for his chamber music playing. The Boston Globe proclaimed: "The questioning, conviction, and feeling in his playing invariably reminds us of the deep reasons why music is important to us, why we listen to it, why we care so much about it".
Max Levinson has performed as soloist with the San Francisco Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, New World Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, Colorado Symphony, Oregon Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Utah Symphony, Boston Pops, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland among others. He has worked with such conductors as Robert Spano, Neemi Järvi, Uriel Segal, Joseph Swensen, Jeffrey Kahane and Alasdair Neale. Recital appearances include Washington Performing Arts Society’s "Kreeger String & Hayes Piano Series" at the Kennedy Center, Tonhalle Orchester Zurich’s "Competition Winner Series," Ravinia’s "Rising Stars," Lincoln Center’s "What Makes it Great" and the FleetBank Boston "Emerging Artists Series."
Artistic Director of the San Juan Chamber Music Festival (in Ouray, Colorado) and former Co-Artistic Director of the Janus 21 Concert Series in Cambridge, Massachussetts, Max Levinson is an active chamber musician. He has collaborated with such renowned artists as the Tokyo Quartet, Vermeer Quartet, Borromeo Quartet, Parker Quartet, Mendelssohn Quartet, the Jacques Thibaud String Trio, Benita Valente, Richard Stoltzman, Pinchas Zukerman, Joseph Silverstein, Anne Akiko Meyers, James Ehnes, Stefan Jackiw, Young Uck Kim, Arnold Steinhardt, David Finckel, Daniel Phillips, Nathaniel Rosen, Carter Brey, Allison Eldredge, Alisa Weilerstein, Christopheren Nomura, and Heiichiro Ohyama. He has appeared at major music festivals including Mostly Mozart, Santa Fe, Marlboro, Tanglewood, La Jolla, Bravo/Vail, Seattle, Killington, Vancouver, Cartagena, and Switzerland’s Davos Festival.
Max Levinson's debut recitals at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall and London's Wigmore Hall as the Guardian Competition winner were critical successes and received standing ovations. He performed ambitious programs, which included works by Bartók, Brahms, Chopin, Liszt, Schönberg, Schubert and Kirchner. Of the New York debut performance, The New York Times wrote that Levinson's "quietly eloquent conceptions, formidable technique and lovely touch left little else to be desired."
Max Levinson garnered international accolades for his two recordings. Max Levinson, his debut recording released immediately following his triumph in Dublin, is an extraordinarily thoughtful program that traces the musical lineage between Brahms, Schumann, Schönberg and Kirchner. The Los Angeles Times deemed Mr. Levinson "a brilliant American pianist, musically mature and fully formed technically. More important, he uses his wide spectrum of pianistic mechanics for altogether poetic ends, touching the listener deeply and often." American Record Guide declared Levinson's second disc, Out of Doors: Piano Music of Béla Bartók "an important recording and a great one. The disc blew me out of my chair, and it has taken me a long time to get back up. Hearing performances as riveting as these produces a rare frisson; indeed, this is the most brilliant and exciting Bartók piano disc I have heard. On the basis of only two recordings, Mr. Levinson has created the myth of a pianist with everything." His recording of Leon Kirchner's “Five Pieces for Piano” was chosen for the composer's complete works recording (Albany Records), alongside recordings by Leon Fleisher and Peter Serkin.
His most recent recording is of the Brahms Sonatas for Violin and Piano, with violinist Stefan Jackiw (Sony Classical). He has also recorded the Brahms Horn Trio with the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival for the Stereophile label, and the violin sonatas of Debussy, Janácek, and Prokofiev with violinist Andrew Kohji Taylor for Warner Classics. Upcoming recording projects include the complete piano music of Bruce Sutherland.
Strongly committed to nurturing young audiences, Max Levinson has been a participant in the Grammy-in-the-Schools program throughout the United States and in other outreach performances in numerous cities. He has experimented with Internet broadcast, served as Artist-in-Residence at Harvard University's Lowell House for four years, and has been featured on National Public Radio's "Performance Today" and "A Note to You." Mr. Levinson serves on the boards of the Aube Tzerko Piano Institute and AMRON (Artists Musicians Recital Opportunity Network). In 2000, he was asked by the Millennium Committee of Ireland to design a National Education Initiative, and gave a televised masterclass as part of the project. He has also taught masterclasses at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, Harvard, MIT, Brigham Young University, Rutgers, the University of Washington, UCLA, the Colburn School, Boston University, the Music Teacher’s Association of California annual convention and in various cities throughout the U.S. In 1997, he was named "Best Debut Artist" by The Boston Globe and was added to Steinway's distinguished roster of artists.
He is on the faculty of both the New England Conservatory and The Boston Conservatory, where his students have achieved success in numerous competitions. He also teaches at the Foulger International Music Festival, and was formerly on the applied music faculty of Brown University. He has recently become active as a conductor, and his performances as conductor of the Killington Music Festival and Foulger Chamber Orchestra have resulted in standing ovations and return engagements.
Born in the Netherlands and raised in Los Angeles, Max Levinson began studying piano at age five. His first teachers were Bruce Sutherland and Aube Tzerko, and as a child he also studied cello, composition and conducting. He attended Harvard University, graduating cum laude with a degree in English Literature, and later completed his graduate studies with Patricia Zander at the New England Conservatory of Music, receiving an Artist Diploma and the Gunther Schuller Medal, an award given to the school’s top graduate student. Max Levinson currently lives in the Boston area with his wife, cellist Allison Eldredge and their two daughters, Natalie and Jessica.
www.maxlevinson.com
mlevinson@bostonconservatory.edu
JONATHAN BASS
Chair, Piano Department
Pianist Jonathan Bass, chair of the piano department at The Boston Conservatory, appears frequently throughout the US as a soloist and chamber musician. He received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the Juilliard School, where he studied with Adele Marcus and Sascha Gorodnitzki, and he earned a Doctor of Music degree from the Indiana University School of Music, where he was a student of, and teaching assistant to, Menahem Pressler of the Beaux Arts Trio. He also studied at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow.
Bass has appeared as concerto soloist with many orchestras, including the Boston Pops at Symphony Hall, the North Carolina Symphony at the Appalachian Summer Festival and the Rhode Island Philharmonic. He gave his NY debut at Weill Hall as First Prize winner of the 1993 Joanna Hodges International Piano Competition, and he has performed in many other major US cities, as well as in Calgary, Mallorca, Moscow, Tel Aviv and Warsaw. Bass has been featured on National Public Radio’s Performance Today, the McGraw-Hill Artists Showcase on WQXR in NY and frequently on WGBH in Boston. Collaborative highlights include a guest appearance with the Boston Symphony Chamber Players at Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood, as well as recitals with violinist Joseph Silverstein in Salt Lake City and in Boston’s Jordan Hall. He has performed extensively as the pianist of the Walden Chamber Players, founded in 1997. Playing orchestral keyboard for the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO), Bass has performed at Symphony Hall, Carnegie Hall, Tanglewood and on two European tours under conductors Roberto Abbado, Christof von Dohnanyi, Bernard Haitink and Seiji Ozawa.
Other awards include First Prize in the American Pianists Association Beethoven Fellowship Competition and First Prize in the American National Chopin Competition. He has recorded music by Bach, Chopin, Scriabin, Daniel Pinkham, Larry Bell, Quincy Porter, Walter Piston, Amy Beach and Augusta Read Thomas. He was also Piano Chair of the Boston University School of Music from 2006-2008, as well as Director of the Young Artists Piano Program at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute. A faculty member at the Boston Conservatory since 1993, Bass was appointed Chair of the Piano Department in 2008. In addition, he has been teaching in the Division for Preparatory and Continuing Education at New England Conservatory (NEC) since 1994. Bass gives frequent master classes throughout the country.
YA-FEI CHUANG
Ya-Fei Chuang earned an artist diploma with honors at Musikhochschule Freiburg (Germany) under the instruction of Robert Levin. Chuang also completed a soloist exam (final performance degree) at Musikhochschule Cologne with Pavel Gililov and a graduate diploma at the New England Conservatory with Russell Sherman. She has performed at the Spectrum Concerts (Berlin) and the Boston Celebrity Series, and at major festivals including the Gilmore, Ravinia, Sarasota, Oregon, Tanglewood, Beethoven Festival with Christoph Eschenbach, European Music Festival (Stuttgart), Schleswig-Holstein, Bach (Leipzig) and Ruhr Festival (Germany). She has also performed in venues such as Boston's Symphony Hall, Jordan Hall, Ozawa Hall, Cologne and Berlin Philharmonien, Schauspielhaus Berlin, Gewandhaus Leipzig and National Philharmonic Hall Warsaw. Chuang has partnered with Kim Kashkashian, Robert Levin and Steven Isserlis for duo performances, and has played chamber music with members of the Berlin Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra and Boston Symphony Orchestra. Chuang recently performed with the Handel and Haydn Society, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and in South America and Asia. A CD of her solo work was released worldwide with the July 2007 issue of FonoForum Magazine. Four recordings of additional work will soon be released.
JUNG-JA KIM
Jung-Ja Kim Diploma and Post-Graduate Diploma, Julliard School. Piano studies with Irwin Freundlich and Ilona Kabos; chamber music with Walter Trampler and Felix Galimir. U.S. recitals at Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Phillips Gallery, Jordan Hall, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and Merkin Hall. Tours in France, Switzerland, England, Holland, Finland, Germany, Japan and Korea. Orchestral engagements with the New York Philharmonic, Baltimore Symphony, St. Louis Chamber, Boston Civic Symphony, Seoul Philharmonic and Czech National Symphony Orchestras. Broadcasts on CBS Television Network, NPR, Radio France. Recipient of the Olga Samaroff Scholarship and Frank Damrosch Scholarship, Julliard School. Winner, Young Concert Artists International Auditions. First Prize, Kosciuszko International Chopin Competition. Martha Baird Rockefeller Grant recipient. Recordings of solo piano works by Ravel (SEM Gramophone, 1993), the Chopin piano concerti (Carlton, 1998) and the complete Rachmaninoff Preludes (Kleos Classics, 2001).
Michael Lewin earned a B.M. and M.M. from The Juilliard School and has studied piano with Leon Fleisher, Irwin Freundlich, Adele Marcus and Yvonne Léfebure. His prizes include the Liszt International Competition, Kapell International Competition and the American Pianists Association Fellowship. He has also received grants from the Rockefeller and Copland foundations and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).
Lewin has performed at venues in more than 30 countries, including New York’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, Washington’s Kennedy Center and Library of Congress, Boston’s Symphony Hall and Jordan Hall, Wilmington’s Grand Opera House, London’s Wigmore Hall, Moscow’s Great Hall, Taipei’s National Concert Hall, Hong Kong’s City Hall Theatre, Holland’s Muziekcentrum, Athens Megaron, Spoleto Festival and PBS Television. He has been a featured soloist with the Bucharest, Netherlands and Guadalajara philharmonics, Moscow Chamber Orchestra, Cairo Symphony, Youth Orchestra of the Americas, the Boston Pops and the symphonies of Phoenix, Indianapolis, New Orleans, Puerto Rico, West Virginia, Colorado, North Carolina and Nevada. Lewin has numerous solo recordings on Naxos, Centaur and Dorian, including music of Liszt, Griffes, Gottschalk, Scarlatti, Balakirev, Glazunov and Scriabin. He is currently a member of the Lewin-Muresanu Duo and a frequent competition adjudicator, as well as a master class instructor.
JANICE WEBER
Janice Weber earned a B.M. in piano, summa cum laude, from Eastman School of Music and has completed piano studies with Cécile Genhart, Nadia Reisenberg and Eugene List. She also held a fellowship at Tanglewood Music Center from 1976–1977.
Weber has given more than 500 recitals throughout North America, Europe and China and in venues such as Carnegie and Merkin halls, Wigmore Hall, St. John's Smith Square, the White House, the National Gallery of Art, Weill Hall, Cleveland Institute of Art and the Newport Music Festival. She has appeared in concerto performances with the Boston Pops, the Sarajevo Philharmonic, Sarasota Pops and the Syracuse, New Hampshire, Chautauqua and Civic symphony orchestras. Additionally, Weber has toured with Alea III and the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble USIS tours of Yugoslavia, Turkey and Baltic the States. Her recording can be heard on Naxos, IMP Masters, New World Records, VAI, Ongaku and Leonarda record labels.
Weber has been involved in master classes at the Eastman School of Music, Oberlin College, the Chautauqua Institution, Tanglewood Music Center, Boston University, Capital University and the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. She is a contributor to publications, such as Clavier and the Musical Times, as well as an adjudicator for the National Endowment for the Arts (NATS), the Gilmore Foundation, the American Piano Association and the Hilton Head International Competition. Weber is also a lecturer at the International Piano Pedagogy Conference and an honorary member of Pi Kappa Lambda. She is also the author of six novels.
Kirill Gerstein
Piano Faculty
The multifaceted pianist Kirill Gerstein has rapidly ascended into classical music’s highest ranks. With a masterful technique, discerning intelligence, and a musical curiosity that has led him to explore repertoire spanning centuries and styles, he has proven to be one of today’s most intriguing and versatile musicians. His early training and experience in jazz has contributed an important element to his interpretive style, inspiring an energetic and expressive musical personality that distinguishes his playing.
Mr. Gerstein is the sixth recipient the prestigious Gilmore Artist Award, presented every four years to an exceptional pianist who, regardless of age or nationality, possesses broad and profound musicianship and charisma and who desires and can sustain a career as a major international concert artist. Since receiving the award in 2010, Mr. Gerstein has shared his prize through the commissioning of boundary-crossing new works by Oliver Knussen, Chick Corea, Brad Mehldau, Timothy Andres and Alexander Goehr with additional commissions scheduled for future seasons. Mr. Gerstein was awarded First Prize at the 2001 Arthur Rubinstein Piano Competition in Tel Aviv, received a 2002 Gilmore Young Artist Award, and a 2010 Avery Fisher Grant.
His recent North American engagements have included performances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Montreal, Oregon, Seattle, Toronto and Vancouver symphonies among others. Internationally, Kirill Gerstein has played with such prominent European orchestras as the Czech, Munich, Rotterdam and Royal Philharmonics, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Dresden Staatskappelle, NDR Sinfonieorchester, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Swedish Radio Orchestra, Tonkünstler Orchestra Vienna, WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne and Zurich Tonhalle, as well as with the NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo and the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra in Caracas with Gustavo Dudamel. He has also performed recitals in Paris, Prague, Hamburg, at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall and at the Liszt Academy in Budapest. He made his Salzburg Festival debut playing solo and two piano works with Andras Schiff and has also appeared at the Proms, Verbier, Lucerne and Jerusalem Chamber Music Festivals.
Born in 1979 in Voronezh, in southwestern Russia, Mr. Gerstein studied piano at a special music school for gifted children and while studying classical music, taught himself to play jazz by listening to his parents’ extensive record collection. After coming to the attention of vibraphonist Gary Burton, who was performing at a music festival in the Soviet Union, Mr. Gerstein came to the United States at 14 to study jazz piano as the youngest student ever to attend Boston’s Berklee College of Music. After completing his studies in three years and following his second summer at the Boston University program at Tanglewood, Mr. Gerstein turned his focus back to classical music and moved to New York City to attend the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied with Solomon Mikowsky and earned both Bachelors and Masters of Music degrees by the age of 20. He continued his studies in Madrid with Dmitri Bashkirov and in Budapest with Ferenc Rados. An American citizen since 2003, Mr. Gerstein now divides his time between the United States and Germany, where he has been a professor of piano at the Musikhochschule in Stuttgart since 2006.
"... Mr. Gerstein is emerging as one of the most respected pianists of his generation." —The New York Times
http://www.kirillgerstein.com/
kgerstein@bostonconservatory.edu
Karolina Rojahn
Piano Faculty; Applied Concentrates
Karolina Rojahn is a Boston based pianist whose repertoire ranges from Bach to Rzewski. Solo performances have led her to such diverse places as France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Slovakia, the Greek Islands, her native Poland and across the US.
An avid proponent of contemporary music, Ms. Rojahn has premiered over a 100 new works by both established and up-and-coming composers. She has recorded 18 CDs of contemporary solo and chamber music repertoire for MMC and Navona labels. These include a collection of chamber music by Carl Vollrath and a duet by Jason Barabba in collaboration with clarinetist Richard Stolzman as well as the music of Byron Petty, Bill Fletcher, Alan Beeler, Michael Evans, Rachel Lee Guthrie, Martin Schlumpf, Ron Nagrocka, David Stewart, Sergio Cervetti, Greg Bowers, Alexandra Ottaway. Her most recent independent project includes a complete recording of the Preludes by Andy Vores.
An active chamber musician, Ms Rojahn has been a member of Boston's Ludovico Ensemble since it's founding in 2003 and has participated in the US premieres of contemporary avant garde masterpieces as well as world premieres of the newly commissioned pieces by living composers. Karolina Rojahn started her musical education in Warsaw, Poland where she attended the prestigious Karol Szymanowski Music Conservatory under the guidance of Kazimierz Gierzod, a well-known polish pianist and pedagogue. After moving to the United States she earned her Bachelor's and Master's degrees from The Boston Conservatory under the tutelage of Michael Lewin. Ms. Rojahn appeared at several prestigious festivals in Europe, including Ticino Musica, Alden-Biesen Festival, International Piano Festival in Obidos and the Samos Island Festival, where she had an opportunity to work with several European virtuosos, such as Paul Badura- Skoda, Milosz Magin, Herbert Seidel and Regina Smendzianka. Ms Rojahn has been a faculty member at the Boston Conservatory since 2007.
krojahn@bostonconservatory.edu
Carlos Vargas
Piano Faculty; Applied Concentrates
Pianist Carlos Vargas’s performances have taken him throughout the United States, South America and countries in Europe in venues such as Teatro el Circulo, Argentina; Teatro Mayor Julio Mario Santodomingo, Colombia; Sala Eduardo Brito, Dominican Republic and Wiener Saal ,Salzburg among others.
A native of Dominican Republic he began his studies at a young age with renowned Cuban pianist and pedagogue Karelia Escalante. Since a young age Mr. Vargas has been an active participant and winner of national and international competitions, getting the Manuel Rueda award in year 2005 in the Festival of Latin-American music celebrated in his country. Other prizes include third prize in The Steinway Competition of Massachusetts, Second Prize in The Churchill Scholarship Competition and second prize at the Bradshaw and Buono International Competition.
During the 2008 season Carlos Vargas toured Argentina with his duo partner, Sebastian Plano, giving concerts as the special guests of the concert season of “Teatro el Círculo” and with the orchestra of Rosario, Argentina. For this reason the young pianist was invited by the President of Dominican Republic to play at the opening of the literary festival celebrated every year in Santo Domingo.
Mr. Vargas has a particular interest in developing programs that facilitate musical education to people that because of their social status and economic situation wouldn’t be able to receive this type of training. For this reason he was been awarded since 2008 a Grant by the Boston Public Library that allowed him to create a piano program in which dozens of kids are able to receive lessons in piano and theory for free.
In 2012 Carlos Vargas co-founded with Colombian Violinist Jose Romero “Macondo Chamber Players”, an organization that brings together established and emerging artists from Latin-America and the world to perform chamber music, teach young people, and encourage international understanding. Macondo Chamber Players has received accolades from the press for its debut concerts in May 2013 and is preparing to go on tour visiting countries such as Colombia, Ecuador, Dominican Republic and Cuba during the 2013-2014 seasons.
Mr. Vargas was awarded since 2005 the Zitrin scholarship and completed both his bachelors and master degree at the Boston Conservatory on full scholarship under the guidance of Dr. Jonathan Bass.
www.macondochamberplayers.org
cvargas@bostonconservatory.edu
